The Girl Who Quoted
by CharmedArtist
Summary: How might events have unfolded had Luna Lovegood played a more central role? Particularly when the Ravenclaw has the words of a thousand other minds to share. A story that trips over the line dividing lightheartedness and solemnity in a way only the dreamy blonde can.


This is an unusual short story, encompassing several years in vignettes taken from Luna Lovegood's life. Every time I read this I can picture the entire story; the interactions between students, Order, Death Eaters; the struggle of friendship and war and love. I see Luna in all her absentminded eccentricity, Hermione as she comes to understand the blonde, Draco and Harry and unmentioned characters in and around the storyline, and it's such a glorious picture that I wanted to share it with you. I don't know whether I'll ever write the complete story, and I don't know if there's a need. I think you'll see what I mean…

* * *

Post-Department of Mysteries:

When Hermione came across her out there, letting the rain pour over her, she seemed shocked and tried to shepherd her back inside. Luna just turned her level gaze on her, feeling the water drip from her hair, run over her cheeks, pool at her feet.

"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."

They were still standing there when the rain stopped, holding hands and feeling the rain.

(Bob Marley)

OoOoO

"Broken mirror; seven years of stolen luck," Luna whispered when she saw the cut on Harry's hand. When Hermione shot her a questioning glace, though, she just turned away.

(Lacuna Coil, Intoxicated)

OoOoO

After Malfoy's visit to their compartment, Luna opened her Quibbler with serene unconcern.

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

(Oscar Wilde)

* * *

Somewhere between Post-Department of Mysteries and Full-out War:

"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one."

\- Kazuo Ishiguro

OoOoO

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

"You really like to quote Nietzsche, don't you?"

Luna just turned her level gaze on her. It wasn't until Hermione looked away in discomfort that Luna said lightly, "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

OoOoO

"You never fail until you stop trying."

(Albert Einstein)

OoOoO

"I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells," Luna chirped, and Harry left with a buoyant sense of everything being right in the world.

(Dr. Seuss)

OoOoO

"Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

(L.M. Montgomery)

OoOoO

"'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.'"

"I've never quite understood why everyone thinks that's our family motto," Luna said absently after Harry quoted W. C. Fields at her. "Daddy much prefers Winston Churchill's quote, 'Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.'"

OoOoO

And Luna said, "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

And with that single phrase, Hermione Granger finally understood Luna Lovegood.

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

OoOoO

Her silver eyes pierced him, and her words hurt all the more for being delivered so calmly. "I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

OoOoO

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake," Luna smiled, and Hermione wondered as they walked which person the Ravenclaw had just quoted. Luna always seemed to be quoting, and even something so innocuous a suggestion as a walk could come from some other great mind.

Deciding she was unlikely to find out on her own, she asked, "Who said that?"

And Luna smiled at her a smile more present than Hermione had seen in some time.

"Wallace Stevens."

OoOoO

"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it," Luna snapped before stalking out.

"...I didn't think she was capable of losing her temper," one Ravenclaw voiced what the entire stunned group was thinking.

(Leo Tolstoy, A Confession)

OoOoO

"What are you thinking about?" Hermione chanced finally, and Luna was silent for a long moment before answering.

"My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations."

(John Green, The Fault in Our Stars)

* * *

Full-out War:

They dragged her in front of their Lord, the little girl bloodied and bruised, and yet when she looked up at him from where she knelt, her gaze was as tranquil as ever.

"Evil will never find peace. It may triumph, but it will never find peace," she said, and though her voice was soft the words hung in the stillness of the room.

The Dark Lord looked down at the tiny form – and laughed. "Peace," he crooned, caressing the word as he rose to his feet. "Peace is stagnation, decay, corruption," he said, drawing out each word even as he neared her, sweeping slowly down the length of the hall. "Peace," he sneered, reaching her and tipping her head back painfully with a hand around her throat, "is for the weak."

"All cruelty springs from weakness," the girl said levelly, and the Dark Lord flung her away with a snarl.

"You know nothing, little girl," he hissed, and she inhaled a terrible little gasp of breath through her abused windpipe. Despite having seen far worse, the Death Eater found himself as short of breath as she.

"The weaker you are the louder you bark," the poor, foolish child whispered, and the Death Eater couldn't look away from her. There she lay, wheezing every breath and yet defiant to the last. And what defiance – calm, almost serene despite the pain she was clearly in, despite the pain she knew had to follow such a challenge.

And the Death Eater couldn't look away from her even when it was her screams and not her words that filled the air.

(L. J. Smith; Seneca; Masashi Kishimoto (Tenten from Naruto))

OoOoO

They both lay there, beaten and bloodied, and Ollivander marveled at the strength of the delicate girl beside him when her smile never wavered. Her small hand found her way into his.

"There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time," she whispered, and her smile was the purest thing he had ever seen.

(C. Joybell C.)

OoOoO

"Seconds, minutes and hours spill over - there's no time here in space"

(Lacuna Coil, Trip The Darkness)

OoOoO

"I will feel the sun come back upon my face; the light outside the darkness is not too far away"

(Lacuna Coil, Kill The Light)

OoOoO

A knock on the door interrupted his train of thought, and Draco stomped over to rip it open.

"What do you-" he broke off abruptly at the sight of Luna Lovegood on his doorstep, looking up at him with unblinking eyes.

"What do I want?" she asked, her light voice making him flinch. She shouldn't sound so innocent, not after-

"I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

OoOoO

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

(George Eliot)

OoOoO

She was content to work in silence, but not when it was that disturbed sort of silence that lets you know that the other has something he desperately wants to say, but is afraid to say in the same measure. So she asked.

Draco started, but only hesitated a moment before asking, "How can you... Why don't I bother you? You were tortured in my house, how can you stand beside me and brew as though nothing happened, as though my father didn't-" he broke off, and Luna was glad for it.

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how," she murmured, handing him an onion. "Would you chop this? It makes my eyes sting terribly."

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

OoOoO

Draco was startled out of his intense concentration by a cold touch to his hand, stopping his feverish stirring.

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible," the bug-eyed girl said gently, taking the stirrer from him and sprinkling cinnamon over his potion. Strangely, he felt the rightness of the odd girl's words.

"I'll prepare the Bubotuber pus, then."

Her bright smile soothed something within him, and it was a far calmer Malfoy that set about work. Maybe a deviation from the written instructions would work where the proper potion hadn't.

(Frank Zappa)

OoOoO

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."

(Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign)

OoOoO

There was a tense silence, strumming through the air like the crackle of magic; then a light voice broke it.

"There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills."

(Gautama Buddha)

OoOoO

"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."

(Dalai Lama XIV)

OoOoO

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall."

He had never understood how Luna always seemed so unaffected, so pure, so serene – but in that moment, with her words lingering in the silence, Harry briefly felt that he could understand. And she seemed to realize it, for she reached out with a soft smile to touch his cheek.

"You always underestimate the power of words," she said, and he turned slightly into her touch.

"I'm glad you're here to teach me, then."

(Mahatma Gandhi)

OoOoO

When Harry realized he'd have to make a speech, he went to his closest friends for advice. Ron shrugged helplessly, Hermione chewed on her lip in thought, but Luna cocked her head at him.

"It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back." Then she turned back to her essay as though she'd never said a thing.

(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

OoOoO

"Don't worry," Luna told the students serenely as they were herded into the Room of Requirement. "We'll be fine." Her voice was one of several reassuring the departing students, but when they were all gone she was the only one who gave voice to what everyone felt.

"I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me." And if her voice shook, no one commented on it.

(S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders)

OoOoO

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

(William Shakespeare, The Tempest)

OoOoO

There was a lull in the fighting, then, and Hermione moved to stand by Luna's side.

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain," the blonde said conversationally, and Hermione looked over at her. She had dirt smudged on her face, torn robes and several cuts, but her expression was the usual one of absentmindedness.

Turning her gaze back to the dark figures of their opponents, Hermione smiled faintly. "I imagine so."

(James Baldwin)

OoOoO

She lay there, pale and limp, but found the strength to lift one hand for Hermione to catch.

"If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets," she whispered, and fell down the dark tunnel of unconsciousness.

(Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)

* * *

Post-War:

When Luna Lovegood accepted her Order of Merlin, her speech was the shortest of them all.

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible," she said with a smile. It got the loudest cheer from her friends, though the rest of the audience seemed uncertain in their applause.

(Walt Disney Company)

OoOoO

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."

(Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets)


End file.
